Panel 1: Note that Emp is referring to this page from back in Empowered vol.3.

Panel
2: Well, this should set off the foot guys, I suppose. First, the dudes
who complain that I draw excessively short feet will weight in, which I
can’t really deny; then again, Decade-Ago Me wasn't shooting for hyper-realistic
anatomical drawing here, either, so you’re gonna have to bear with my
whimsical stylistic flourishes. (Check my Instagram, if you want more
reality-based figure drawing.)

Second,
no doubt we’ll hear from the commenter who seems bemused by how often I draw
Emp’s feet pointed in this manner. I do that because, guess what,
that’s one of the few g-d positions in which I can draw a
semi-decent foot. (Though, to be honest, this panel’s footsies
ain’t all that great looking.) If you’ve done much figure drawing,
you’ll soon recognize that the human foot appears as an ungainly,
goofy-looking “meat club” from a dismaying number of angles, which is
why lesser artists such as myself rely so heavily on the few foot positions
we can pull off convincingly.

Panel
3: Sound the Overdialoguing Alarm, folks! (Might have sounded it during
panel 2, as well.) Definitely should’ve cut this fairly technical
exegesis on BDSM minutiae down to a more reasonable length. And yeahp,
as you might guess, this riff was indeed based on real-world info,
courtesy of a helpful reader from the BDSM community. She pointed out
that, in an Empowered vol.1 scene, I incorrectly wrote Emp
complaining about hemp rope being itchier than nylon, when the opposite
is true. To quote Prince in “U Got the Look,” my face is red; I stand
corrected.